A payment advice note generally contains the incoming payment details required for assigning and clearing the relevant open item. Typically, payment advice note headers contain the payment amount, payment date, and other information about the payment. The advice items contain information on the paid items. They also contain information used for identification purposes such as document number, reference number, billing document number, customer reference number, and so on. Payment advice notes are used during payment clearing to search for and assign open items automatically. Payment advice notes are also referred to as remittance advice notes.
Typically, payment advice notes are provided from a payer to a payee by means of regular mail, e-mail or by fax. Among other disadvantages, these conventional transmission methods have the disadvantage that the data contained on the payment advice notes needs to be manually re-entered into the payee's financial computer system. Payment advice notes are not only received for incoming payments but also for outgoing payments. When a direct debiting procedure is used, the payment is initiated by the payee rather than by the payer. In this instance payment advice notes are provided from the payee to the payer.
Payment advice notes may also be transmitted by means of an electronic message, such as EDIFACT. One of the problems associated with this is that the payer needs to know the exact address of the processing entity of the financial processing system of the payee which is to receive the payment advice note in order to enable automatic processing. Another problem associated with this approach is that the payer needs to be aware of the exact format used by the processing entity of the payee's financial computer processing system.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved transmission method and system for payment advice data.